<CENTER><font size =4>"MILITARISM FOR ABROAD," NAVALISM AND COLONIAL MILITARISM. POSSIBILITIES OF WAR AND DISARMAMENT.</font></center><br><br>

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<CENTER><font size =4>"MILITARISM FOR ABROAD," NAVALISM AND COLONIAL MILITARISM. POSSIBILITIES OF WAR AND DISARMAMENT.</font></center><br>

The army of the capitalist order of society

The army of the capitalist order of society

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innumerable possibilities.<ref>Moltke's views in this respect were highly fantastic. According to him the times when wars were resolved upon by cabinets were indeed past, but he considers the political party leaders to be wicked and dangerous provokers of war. The party leaders and -- the stock exchange! It is true that here and there he has a deeper view of things (Collected Works, 3, pp. I, 126, 135, 138).</ref> Of conflict and forces to the front ever more vigorously two other

innumerable possibilities.<ref>Moltke's views in this respect were highly fantastic. According to him the times when wars were resolved upon by cabinets were indeed past, but he considers the political party leaders to be wicked and dangerous provokers of war. The party leaders and -- the stock exchange! It is true that here and there he has a deeper view of things (Collected Works, 3, pp. I, 126, 135, 138).</ref> Of conflict and forces to the front ever more vigorously two other

of our colonial policies, flow into the ample pockets of the exploiting

+

class, of capitalism, the arch-enemy of the proletariat. They

+

know that the wars the ruling classes engage in for their own

+

purposes demand of the working-class the most terrible sacrifice

+

of blood and treasure,<ref>The number of the victims of the wars between 1799 and 1904 (excluding the Russo-Japanese War) is estimated at about 15,000,000 men killed.</ref> for

+

which they are recompensed, after the work has been done, by miserable

+

pensions, beggarly grants to war invalids, street organs and kicks.<br><br>

+

+

They know that after every war a veritable

+

mud-volcano of Hunnic brutality and baseness sends its floods

+

over the nations participating in it, rebarbarizing all civilization

+

for years.<ref>Cf. Moltke, p. 24, note 6, of this book, and "Moltke's Collected Works," II, p. 288. In his opinion war is supposed to promote virtue and efficiency, especially moral energy.</ref> The worker knows

+

that the fatherland for which he is to fight is not his fatherland;

+

that there is only one real enemy for the proletariat of every

+

country the capitalist class who oppresses and exploits the proletariat,

+

that the proletariat of every country is by its most vital interests

+

closely bound to the proletariat of every other country, that

+

all national interests recede before the common interests of the

+

international proletariat, and that the international coalition

+

of exploiters and oppressors must be opposed by the international

+

coalition of the exploited and oppressed. He knows that the proletarians,

+

if they were to be employed in a war, would be led to fight against

+

their own brethren and the members of their own class, and thus

+

against their own interests. The class-conscious proletarian therefore

+

not only frowns upon that international purpose of the army and

+

the entire capitalist policy of expansion, he is fighting them

+

earnestly and with understanding. To the proletariat falls the

+

chief task of fighting militarism in that direction, too, to the

+

utmost, and it is more and more becoming conscious of that task,

+

which is shown by the international congresses; by the exchange

+

of protestations of solidarity between the German and French Socialists

+

at the outbreak of the Franco-German War of 1870, between the

+

Spanish and American Socialists at the outbreak of the war about

+

Cuba, between the Russian and Japanese Socialists at the outbreak

+

of the war in eastern Asia in 1904, and by the resolution to declare

+

a general strike in case of war between Sweden and Norway, adopted

+

by the Swedish Social Democrats. It was further shown by the parliamentary

+

attitude of the German Social Democracy towards the war credits

+

of 1870 and during the Morocco conflict, as also by the attitude

+

taken up by the class-conscious proletariat towards intervention

+

in Russia.

+

<hr>

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<center><font size =4>FUNDAMENTAL FEATURES OF "MILITARISM FOR HOME" AND ITS PURPOSE</font></center><br>

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Militarism does not only serve for defence

+

and attack against the foreign enemy; it has a second task,<ref>That task of bolstering up the existing interior order of things devolves upon militarism not only in the capitalist order of society, but in all societies based upon class-division.</ref> one which is being brought out

+

ever more clearly with the growing accentuation of class antagonism,

+

defining ever more clearly the form and nature of militarism,

+

viz., that of protecting the existing state of society, that of

+

being a pillar of capitalism and all reactionary forces in the

+

war of liberation engaged in by the working-class. Here it shows

+

itself purely as a weapon in the class struggle, a weapon in the

+

hands of the ruling classes, serving, in conjunction with the

+

police and law-courts, school and church, the purpose of obstructing

+

the development of class-consciousness and of securing, besides,

+

at all costs to a minority the dominating position in the state

+

and the liberty of exploiting their fellow-men, even against the

+

enlightened will of the majority of the people.<br><br>

+

+

This is modern militarism, which attempts nothing

+

less than squaring the circle, which arms the people against the

+

people itself, which, by trying with all means to force upon social

+

division an artificial division according to ages, makes bold

+

to turn the workman into an oppressor and an enemy, into a murderer

+

of members of his own class and his friends, of his parents, sisters

+

and brothers and children, into a murderer of his own past and

+

future; which pretends to be democratic and despotic, enlightened

+

and mechanical, popular and anti-popular at the same time.<br><br>

+

+

It must, however, not be forgotten that militarism

+

can also turn the point of its sword against the interior national,

+

and even the interior<ref>See the struggle between the French state and church during the conflict of December, 1906.</ref> religious

+

&quot;enemy&quot; (in Germany, for instance, against the Poles,<ref>See the disorders during the election in Upper Silesia in 1903.</ref> Alsatians and Danes), and

+

can moreover be employed in conflicts among the non-proletarian

+

classes, that militarism is a highly polymorphous phenomenon,

+

capable of many changes, and that the Prusso-German militarism

+

has attained a peculiarly flourishing state in consequence of

+

the peculiar semi-absolutist, feudal bureaucratic conditions of

+

Germany. This Prusso-German militarism is endowed with all the

+

bad and dangerous qualities of any form of capitalist militarism,

+

so that it is best suited to serve as a paradigm for showing militarism

+

in its present stage, in its forms, means and effects. As nobody

+

has as yet succeeded, to use a Bismarckian phrase, in imitating

+

our Prussian lieutenants, nobody has as yet been fully able to

+

imitate our Prusso-German militarism, which has not only become

+

a state within the state, but positively a state above the state.<br><br>

of countries such as England and America, Switzerland and Belgium.<br><br>

+

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<I>Great Britain</I><ref>Since the above was written great changes have taken place in the army system of Great Britain. During the world war the mercenary army has disappeared and a conscript army has taken its place. Moreover, in the years immediately preceding the war Great Britain's volunteer forces underwent great changes in composition and name. The militia, too, ceased to exist, either in name or in fact, after 1908. [TRANSLATOR. ]</ref> has a mercenary army (&quot;regulararmy&quot;), a militia with a mounted yeomanry; besides, the so-called

+

Volunteers, a force voluntarily recruited which, on the whole,

+

is unpaid and numbered 245,000 men in 1905. The standing army,

+

including the militia (in which the furnishing of substitutes

+

is permitted) numbered 444,000 men in 1905, of whom however only

+

some 162,000 were stationed in England. For Ireland there exists,

+

moreover, a militarily organized police force of some 12,000 men.

+

The standing army is largely employed abroad, especially in India,

+

where two-thirds of the army of almost 230,000<ref>In 1905-6, 229,820. In the Native States 136,837 soldiers in 1903.</ref> men consists of natives. The colonies have, as a rule, their own

+

militias and volunteer forces. The relation between Great Britain's

+

home and colonial militarism is characterized by the military

+

budget, which, in 1897, was about 360 million marks for the home

+

country and about 510 million marks for India. To this must be

+

added the immense fleet, with crews and marines numbering almost

+

200,000 men.<br><br>

+

+

The army system of the United States is a mixture

+

of standing army and militia. The army, which is made up by recruiting<ref>Recruiting is becoming ever more difficult, and the percentage of alien recruits is growing, a fact that worries the American government.</ref> and is by law limited to

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a maximum strength of 100,000 men, numbers in times of peace,

+

according to the enlisted strength of 1905, 61,000 men (on October

+

15, 1906, including the Philippine Scouts, 67,253 men), among

+

them 3,800 officers, mostly educated at the military academy at

+

West Point. In the same year the militia numbered some 111,000

+

men. The militia is organized on a fairly democratic basis. In

+

times of peace it is under the control of the governors of the

+

various states, and its armament and training is not in accordance

+

with modern efficiency. Besides, an important part is played by

+

the police force, frequently organized on a military basis.<br><br>

+

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Of quite an original kind is another institution

+

which, considered in its formal aspect, does not fall within the

+

frame of this chapter, but which, however, must not be left unmentioned

+

in this connection on account of the function it performs. In

+

all the capitalist countries we find the gun-men of the employers,

+

even if, in some cases, they be only strike-breakers armed by

+

the employers. (This is no rare occurrence in Switzerland and

+

France, for instance, and as to Germany we refer the reader to

+

the Hamburg ship-builders' strike and the incidents at Nuremberg

+

in 1906). But the American capitalists have at all times at their

+

disposal such a band of gun-men of prime quality in the shape

+

of the armed Pinkerton detectives. Finally, taking into consideration

+

some 30,000 men in the American navy, in 1905, we see that the

+

United States, too, furnishes a choice collection of the main

+

forms of the armed forces of the state.<br><br>

+

+

In <I>Switzerland</I> there existed until lately

+

a real people's army, a general arming of the people. Every Swiss

+

citizen, able to bear arms, had his gun and ammunition continually

+

in his house. That was the army of democracy of which Gaston Moch

+

treats in his well-known book. Switzerland enjoying an international

+

guarantee equal to that of Belgium, it was only natural that in

+

this country &quot;militarism for abroad&quot; should assume and

+

retain a particularly mild character, a result to which numerous

+

other circumstances contributed their share. But the &quot;militarism

+

for home&quot; changed with the accentuation of class antagonism.

+

The fact that the proletariat possessed arms and ammunition was

+

increasingly felt, by the capitalist class that wanted to dominate,

+

to be an impediment to its liberty to exploit and oppress and

+

even a danger to its existence. So, in September, 1899, they began

+

to disarm the people by taking its cartridges away and endeavoring

+

at the same time to develop with continually increasing vigor

+

the existing rudiments of militarism in the direction of the institutions

+

of the great military powers. Attempts were made to transform

+

successively the active portions of the army into a willing instrument

+

of class domination by all the means employed by those military

+

powers. In that way the celebrated Swiss militia developed more

+

and more the repellent traits which have made all standing armies

+

a disgrace to civilization. Nothing has been changed by the resolution

+

on the employment of soldiers in strikes which was passed by the

+

National Council, on December 21, 1906, in connection with the

+

law on military organization.<ref>See p. 151.</ref> <br><br>

+

+

Because of her neutrality, <I>Belgium's</I>

+

demand for soldiers for her standing army is considerably smaller

+

(by about one-half) than her &quot;stock&quot; of material for

+

soldiering. On that account the system of universal military service

+

is modified by a <I>draft system</I> (drawing lots) and by the

+

<I>substitute</I> system, which latter deeply influences the character

+

of the army. Naturally, only the well-to-do are able to furnish

+

substitutes, and they as naturally make the widest use of it.

+

At first that system of furnishing substitutes, which was formerly

+

so general, may not have been of any special political significance,

+

but in Belgium it has led to a result very serious for the ruling

+

class, as the country possesses a numerous proletariat and the

+

percentage of workmen is very great among the men liable to military

+

service and drawn by lot. Even that portion of the proletarian

+

Belgian army which did not consist of class-conscious proletarians

+

and proletarians ready to risk all, so rapidly succumbed to the

+

anti-militarist propaganda that for years past it has not had

+

any value as a weapon in the hands of the ruling class against

+

the interior enemy and is no longer used as such. But they found

+

a way out of the difficulty. From former times there existed an

+

institution, called the civic guard. To the civic guard belong

+

those who have drawn a lucky number and have furnished substitutes,

+

but only if they can buy their own uniforms and arms, a condition

+

almost excluding the poorer population. It used to be nothing

+

but a fancy-dress parade, its members were mostly Liberals, its

+

organization, democratic. Members of the civic guard kept their

+

arms at home, elected their own officers, etc. A change was brought

+

about in consequence of the increasing untrustworthiness of the

+

standing army. The administration and management of the civic

+

guard were taken out of the hands of the municipalities and transferred

+

to those of the government, the democratic institutions were abolished,

+

and the arms were taken away from the individuals and locked away

+

in the depots of the military administration. A fairly rigorous

+

system of military drill was introduced, and the training of the

+

civic guard was confided to the most objectionable characters

+

among the former officers of the standing army. Men between the

+

ages of 20 and 30 have to train no less than three nights a week

+

and on half of a Sunday every two weeks, and if formerly those

+

military exercises reminded one of the happy-go lucky functions

+

of our German civic soldiers of olden days, they are now carried

+

out under a sharp control and punctuality is enforced by punishments.

+

It is to be noted that this reorganization of the civic guard

+

has only taken place in communities of more than 20,000 inhabitants,

+

whilst in the other places the civic guard has remained a ridiculous

+

presence. That fact, too, marks the civic guard to be a special

+

force of the government in the struggle against the &quot;interior

+

enemy.&quot; Excluding the military police, the standing army

+

numbered, in 1905, about 46,000 men; the active civic guard numbered

+

about 44,000 men, almost as many.<br><br>

+

+

Belgium thus possesses an army against the

+

exterior, and a special army against the interior enemy, an exquisite

+

arrangement which, as the employment of the civic guard during

+

the late suffrage struggles and strikes has proved, renders and

+

will continue to render good service to the capitalist regime

+

in Belgium.<br><br>

+

+

In addition, there is in Belgium the constabulary

+

or military police, who have simply to perform military tasks

+

in war as well as during strikes and riots. They are very numerous

+

and spread all over the country, of great mobility, and can be

+

concentrated, shifted and mobilized at a moment's notice, at Tervueren,

+

near Brussels, they have general barracks for their flying brigade,

+

and they swarm out during strikes and such like movements all

+

over the country like a flight of wasps. Most of them are former

+

non-commissioned officers of the army, they are well paid, excellently

+

armed, in short, an elite force. Whilst the civic guard is as

+

if created for its task in the class-struggle, because it represents

+

nothing less than a special military mobilization of the capitalist

+

bourgeoisie, which is well aware of its interests, the &quot;watch-dogs&quot;

+

of capitalism, organized in the constabulary, play their part

+

no less efficiently for the present, according to the rule that

+

they must play the tune called for by him who pays the piper.<br><br>

+

+

<I>Japan</I>, a country

+

in about the same capitalist feudal stage of development as Germany,

+

has in spite of her insular position, which is similar to that

+

of England, and in consequence of her strained foreign relations,

+

of late become even from a military point of view a veritable

+

counterpart of Germany, except perhaps that her troops are given

+

a more serviceable war training.

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<hr>

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<center><font size =4>CONCLUSIONS. RUSSIA</font></center><br>

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It follows from all this that the size and

+

the particular character of the organization of an army accommodate

+

themselves to the international situation, to the function the

+

army has as regards the exterior enemy. The international tension

+

is driving states (even those which are not yet capitalist and

+

which compete with and have to protect themselves against the

+

capitalist states) to train all citizens capable of bearing arms

+

and to adopt the most rigorous form of military organization,

+

the standing conscript army. This can be considerably relaxed

+

by natural causes as, for instance, by the insular position of

+

Great Britain or the comparatively insular situation of the United

+

States, and by artificial political means as, for instance, the

+

neutralization of Switzerland and the states of the Low Countries.

+

But the function of &quot;militarism for home,&quot; against the

+

interior enemy, militarism as a weapon in the class-struggle,

+

is an ever necessary accompanying feature of capitalist development,

+

and even Gaston Moch regards the &quot;re-establishment of order&quot;

+

as a &quot;legitimate function of a people's army.&quot; The reason

+

why &quot;militarism for home&quot; exhibits forms greatly differing

+

from one another explains itself simply by the fact that such

+

militarism has hitherto had a more national purpose, the fulfilment

+

of which was not so much influenced by international competition,

+

that therefore it can give much more consideration to national

+

peculiarities. However, England and also America (a country in

+

which the standing army was increased from 27,000 to about 61,000

+

men from 1896 to 1906, where the number of men in the war navy

+

was doubled, the war budget multiplied by two and a half and the

+

navy budget by three in the same space of time, and where Mr.

+

Taft asked for 100 millions more for 1907), are being increasingly

+

pushed into the paths of the militarism of the European continent.

+

This is certainly caused in the first line by changes in the international

+

situation and the requirements of jingo and imperialist world

+

policy, but in the second line quite unmistakably by changes in

+

the interior tension, the intensification of the class struggle.

+

It is scarcely possible that the militaristic velleities of the

+

British war secretary, Haldane, in September, 1906, have only

+

a <I>temporal</I> relation to the energetic political activity

+

of the British working-class. The propensity to introduce universal

+

military training of the Swiss kind, which for the time being

+

has been repulsed in England in spite of the strong agitation

+

in favor of such training and which in the United States found

+

significant expression in Mr. Roosevelt's message of December

+

4, 1906, is not a symptom of progress. It signifies, in spite

+

of all said to the contrary, a strengthening of militarism as

+

compared to its present condition, and is a station on the precipitous

+

road leading to a standing army, as the example of Switzerland

+

proves.<br><br>

+

+

On account of the great multiplicity of possible

+

combinations between the factors determining the extent and nature

+

of the special requirements for protection against the exterior

+

and interior enemy, militarism shows unmistakably a pronounced

+

multiformity and transmutability. But that transmutability is

+

always kept within the limits prescribed by the absolutely essential

+

capitalistic purpose of militarism. Nevertheless, development

+

may temporarily take directly opposite roads. While France, for

+

example, under Picquart, is earnestly attacking the problem of

+

greatly reducing the training period of her reserve and territorial

+

troops, reforming the &quot;biribiri&quot; and abolishing separate

+

military jurisdiction, the president of the German central military

+

court, von Massow, quitted the service in the fall of 1906, because

+

the military command (the Prussian war ministry) had on the strength

+

of legal interpretation formally invaded the independence of the

+

military courts, an independence which had indeed already received

+

a curious construction by the disciplining of the judges acting

+

in the Bilse case. French conditions are almost exclusively due

+

to the prevailing anti-clericalism; clericalism has an important

+

pillar in the army, the government needs the help of the proletariat

+

for its anti-clerical policy. Such a combination is of course

+

not of eternal duration, nor has it sprung from a real, lasting

+

tendency of evolution. It results from a constellation, transient

+

in its nature, and is quite compatible, as has been proved, with

+

an energetic fight against anti militarism.<br><br>

+

+

From these points of view an interesting case

+

is furnished by Russia which has been forced to adopt universal

+

military service on account of her intensely strained foreign

+

relations, and which as an Asiatic despotic state is confronted

+

by an interior discord without example. The interior enemy of

+

Czarism is not only the proletariat, but also the immense mass

+

of the peasantry and the bourgeoisie, and even a large portion

+

of the nobility. Ninety-nine percent. of the Russian soldiers

+

belong to classes that are the arch-enemies of the Czar's despotism.

+

The development of class consciousness is extremely hampered by

+

the low state of education, national and religious antagonisms

+

and the clashes of economic and social interests; further by the

+

greater or smaller pressure exercised by the widely ram)fied bureaucratic

+

apparatus, by the unfavorable arrangement of political districts,

+

the insufficiently developed means of communication, and other

+

things. By a cunningly devised system of elite forces, like the

+

constabulary and, above all, the Cossacks, who have been positively

+

changed into a special social class by means of good pay and other

+

material rewards, large political privileges and the establishment

+

of semi-socialist Cossack communities, and are thus artificially

+

bound to the despotic regime, Czarism attempts to secure a sufficiently

+

strong band of faithful retainers to fight down the unrest which

+

has penetrated deeply into the ranks of the army. In addition

+

to these &quot;watch-dogs of Czarism&quot; there are the Circassians<ref>Even Sheriff von Sievers-Roemershof writes of the "blood-thirsty Circassians" in the Dünazeitung of December 4, (17,) 1906.</ref> and other barbarian populations

+

living in the empire of the knout who, for instance, were let

+

loose upon the land like a pack of wolves during the counterrevolution

+

in the Baltic Province, and all the other armed beneficiaries

+

of Czarism whose name is legion, the police and their accomplices,

+

as well as the Russian toughs, the black bands. In the bourgeois

+

capitalist state the conscript army, in its function as a weapon

+

against the proletariat, is a crude and, at the same time, terrible

+

and fantastic contradiction in itself, under the Czar's despotic

+

regime the conscript army is a weapon which must 1:urn itself

+

more and more with crushing power against the despotism of Czarism

+

itself, from which at the same time the conclusion must be drawn

+

that the experience derived from the antimilitarist developments

+

in Russian <I>can be utilized only with great care in regard to

+

the bourgeois capitalist states.</I> In the bourgeois capitalist

+

states, the attempts of the ruling classes to buy the people to

+

fight against itself, and that even largely with money taken from

+

the people for the purpose mentioned, are condemned to ultimate

+

failure. In regard to Russia, we are witnessing already how desperate

+

and wretched attempts of Czarism to bribe the revolution, as it

+

were, are resulting in an early and pitiable fiasco amidst the

+

miseries of the financial situation, in spite of all the endeavors

+

of the unscrupulous international stock-exchange financiers to

+

retrieve the situation. It is certain that the loan question is

+

an important one, at least in regard to the rate at which the

+

revolution develops, but as little as revolutions can be artificially

+

made as little and still less can they be bought,<ref>Not even, as now proposed, in the modern way of jobbing away and discounting concessions and natural resources to American trusts, that last invention and cry of despair of the financial policy of Czarism.</ref> even if the means of the high finance of the world should be employed.

Latest revision as of 16:20, 7 July 2009

Militarism is not specifically a capitalistic
institution. It is, on the contrary, an institution peculiar and
essential to all societies divided in classes, of which capitalist
society is the last. It is true that capitalism develops, like
every other society divided in classes, a kind of militarism peculiar
to itself,[1] for militarism is
in its nature a means to an end, or to several ends, which differ
with the kind of the society and which are to be attained in various
ways according to the different characters of the societies. That
fact appears not only in the constitution of the army, but also
in the remaining substance of militarism which mani tests itself
in the tasks militarism has to accomplish.

Best adapted to the capitalistic stage of development
is the army built on universal military science which, though
an army constituted by the people, is not an army of the people,
but an army against the people, or becomes increasingly. converted
into such a one.

Now it appears in the shape of a standing army,
now as a militia. The standing army,[2]
which is likewise not an institution peculiar to capitalism, appears
as its most developed, and even its normal form, this will be
shown in the following pages.

"MILITARISM FOR ABROAD," NAVALISM AND COLONIAL MILITARISM. POSSIBILITIES OF WAR AND DISARMAMENT.

The army of the capitalist order of society
serves a double purpose, like the army of the other social systems.

It is, in the first place, a national institution
destined for attack abroad or for the protection against a danger
coming from abroad, in short, designed for international complications
or, to use a military catch-phrase, against the foreign enemy.

That function has in no way been done away
with by more recent developments. For capitalism war is indeed,
in Moltke's phrase, "a part of God's world order."[3] It is true that there exists
in Europe itself at least a tendency to eliminate certain causes
of war, and the probability of a war originating in Europe itself
decreases more and more, in spite of Alsace-Lorraine, the anxiety
about the trio, Clemenceau, Pichon, Picquart, in spite of the
Eastern Question, in spite of pan-islamism, and in spite of the
revolution going on in Russia. In their place, however, new and
highly dangerous causes of friction have arisen in consequence
of the desires for commercial and political expansion[4] cherished by the so-called "civilized nations," desires
which are mainly responsible for the Eastern Question and pan-islamism,
and in consequence of world politics, especially colonial politics
which, as Chancellor Bulow frankly recognized in the Reichstag,
on November 14, 1906,[5] contains
innumerable possibilities.[6] Of conflict and forces to the front ever more vigorously two other
forms of militarism -- navalism and colonial militarism.
We Germans can tell a story of that!

Navalism, militarism
on sea, is the natural brother of land militarism and shows all
its repulsive and vicious traits. It is in a still greater degree
than land militarism is at present not only an effect, but also
a cause of international dangers, of the danger of a world war.

Some good folk and deceivers want to make us
believe that the strained relations between Germany and England[7] are merely the result of
some misunderstandings, agitations of mischievous journalists,
the braggings of unskilful diplomatists; but we know better. We
know that these strained relations are a necessary result of the
increasing economic competition between Germany and England in
the world's markets, a direct result of the unbridled capitalistic
development and international competition. The Spanish-American
War for Cuba, Italy's Abyssinian War, England's South African
War, the Chinese-Japanese War, the Chinese adventure of the Great
Powers, the Russian-Japanese War, all of them, however different
their special causes and the conditions from which they sprung
might have been, yet exhibit the one great common characteristic
feature of wars of expansion. And if we remember the strained
relations between England and Russia on account of Thibet, Persia
and Afghanistan, the disagreements between Japan and the United
States in the winter of 1906, and finally the Morocco conflict
of glorious memory with the Franco-Spanish coöperation of
December, 1906,[8] we must
recognize that the capitalistic policy of colonization and expansion
has placed numerous mines under the edifice of world peace, mines
whose fuses are in many hands and which can explode very easily
and unexpectedly.[9] It is certainly
thinkable that a time may come when the division of the world
has progressed to such an extent that a policy of placing all
possible colonial possessions in trust for the colonial empires
becomes feasible, thus eliminating colonial competition, as has
been accomplished in regard to private capitalist competition
to a certain extent by the combines and trusts. But that is a
distant possibility which the economic and national rise of China
alone may defer for an incalculable space of time.

All the alleged plans for disarmament
are thus seen to be for the present nothing but foolery, phrase-making
and attempts at deception. The fact that the Czar was the chief
originator of the comedy at the Hague puts the true stamp on all
of them.

Indeed, in our own days-the bubble of an alleged
English disarmament burst in a ridiculous fashion. Secretary for
War Hilton, the alleged promoter of those intentions, came out
in strong words as an opponent of each and every reduction of
the active military forces and showed himself as a true military
hotspur,[10] whilst at the same
time the Anglo-French military convention appeared above the horizon.
Moreover, at the very hour when preparations were being made for
the second "Peace Conference," Sweden increased her
fleet, America[11] and Japan
saw their military budgets mount higher and higher, and the Clémenceau
government in France demanded an increase of 208 millions,[12] dwelt upon the necessity of
a strong army and navy, the Hamburger Nachrichten [an important
semi-official German newspaper] was describing the unshakeable
faith in the holy savior Militarism as the quintessence of the
feeling dominating Germany's ruling classes, and the German people
were treated by their government to increased military demands[13] which were greedily grasped
at even by our Liberals.[14]
Such facts give us a measure of the naïveté displayed
by the French Senator, d'Estournelles de Constant, a member of
the Hague Tribunal, in an essay on the limitation of armaments.[15] Indeed, in the imagination of
this political dreamer it needs not even the proverbial swallow
to make the summer of disarmament, a simple sparrow will do. After
that it is almost refreshing to encounter the honest brutality
with which the great powers at the conference dropped Mr. Stead's
proposals and refused even to place the question of disarmament
on the agenda of the second conference.

A few more remarks must be made about the third
offspring of capitalism on the military side, viz., colonial
militarism. The colonial army (by this is meant not the colonial
militia,[16] as planned for
German Southwest Africa, still less the entirely different militia
of the almost independent British colonies) is of extraordinarily
great importance for England, and its importance is also increasing
for the other civilized countries. Whilst for England it not only
fulfils the task of oppressing and keeping in check the colonial
"interior enemy," i.e., the natives of the colonies,
but also constitutes a weapon against the exterior colonial enemy,
Russia, for instance, it serves the other colonizing powers, especially
America and Germany, often under the names of "Schutztruppe"
(protective troops) or foreign legion,[17] almost exclusively for the first named purpose, that of driving
the miserable natives to slave in the bagnios for capitalism,
and to shoot and cut them down and starve them without pity whenever
they attempt to protect their country against the foreign conquerors
and extortioners. The colonial army, which frequently consists
of the scum of the European population,[18] is the most brutal and abominable of all the tools employed by
our capitalistic states. There is hardly a crime which colonial
militarism and savage tropical brutality [Tropenkoller,
the Germans call it], directly cultivated by it, have not produced.[19] The names of Tippelskirch, Woermann, Podbielski, Leist, Wehlau, Peters, Ahrenberg, and others
testify and prove it for Germany, too. They are the fruit by which
the nature of the policy of colonization can be known, that colonial
policy which, pretending[20] to spread Christianity of civilization or to protect national
honor, piously practices usury and fraud for the advantage of
capitalists interested in colonies, which murders and-violates
defenceless human beings, burns down the possessions of the defenceless,
robbing and pillaging them, mocking and disgracing Christianity
and civilization.[21] Even the
fame of a Cortez or a Pizarro fades before India and Tongking,
the Congo, German Southwest Africa and the Philippines.

THE PROLETARIAT AND THE WAR

lt the function of militarism was above defined
as being a national one directed against the foreign enemy it
must not be understood to mean that it is a function answering
the interests, welfare and wishes of the capitalistically governed
and exploited peoples. The proletariat of the whole world can
not expect any profit from the policies which make necessary the
"militarism for abroad", its interests are most sharply
opposed to such policies. Directly or indirectly those policies
serve the exploiting interests of the ruling classes of capitalism.
They are policies which prepare more or less skilfully, the way
for the world-wide expansion of the wildly anarchical mode of
production and the senseless and murderous competition of capitalism,
in which process all the duties of civilized man towards the less
developed peoples are flung aside; and yet nothing is really attained
except an insane imperiling of the whole existence of our civilization
in consequence of the warlike world complications that are conjured
up. The working-class, too, welcome the immense economic developments
of our days. But they also know that this economic development
could be carried on peacefully without the mailed fist, without
militarism and navalism, without the trident being in our hand
and with out the barbarities of our colonial system, if only sensibly
managed communities were to carry it on according to international
understandings and in conformity with the duties and interests
of civilization. They knew that our world policy largely explains
itself as an attempt to fight down and confuse forcibly and clumsily
the social and political home problems confronting the ruling
classes, in short, as an attempt at a policy of deceptions and
misreadings such as Napoleon III. was a master of. They know that
the enemies of the working-class love to make their pots boil
over the fires of narrow-minded jingoism, that the fear of war
in 1887, unscrupulously engineered by Bismarck, did excellent
service to the most dangerous forces of reaction, that according
to a nice little plan, lately revealed,[22]
and hatched by a number of highly placed personages, the Reichstag
suffrage was to be filched from the German people in the excitement
of jingoism, "after the return of a victorious army."
They know that the advantages of the economic development which
those policies attempt to exploit, especially all the advantages
of our colonial policies, flow into the ample pockets of the exploiting
class, of capitalism, the arch-enemy of the proletariat. They
know that the wars the ruling classes engage in for their own
purposes demand of the working-class the most terrible sacrifice
of blood and treasure,[23] for
which they are recompensed, after the work has been done, by miserable
pensions, beggarly grants to war invalids, street organs and kicks.

They know that after every war a veritable
mud-volcano of Hunnic brutality and baseness sends its floods
over the nations participating in it, rebarbarizing all civilization
for years.[24] The worker knows
that the fatherland for which he is to fight is not his fatherland;
that there is only one real enemy for the proletariat of every
country the capitalist class who oppresses and exploits the proletariat,
that the proletariat of every country is by its most vital interests
closely bound to the proletariat of every other country, that
all national interests recede before the common interests of the
international proletariat, and that the international coalition
of exploiters and oppressors must be opposed by the international
coalition of the exploited and oppressed. He knows that the proletarians,
if they were to be employed in a war, would be led to fight against
their own brethren and the members of their own class, and thus
against their own interests. The class-conscious proletarian therefore
not only frowns upon that international purpose of the army and
the entire capitalist policy of expansion, he is fighting them
earnestly and with understanding. To the proletariat falls the
chief task of fighting militarism in that direction, too, to the
utmost, and it is more and more becoming conscious of that task,
which is shown by the international congresses; by the exchange
of protestations of solidarity between the German and French Socialists
at the outbreak of the Franco-German War of 1870, between the
Spanish and American Socialists at the outbreak of the war about
Cuba, between the Russian and Japanese Socialists at the outbreak
of the war in eastern Asia in 1904, and by the resolution to declare
a general strike in case of war between Sweden and Norway, adopted
by the Swedish Social Democrats. It was further shown by the parliamentary
attitude of the German Social Democracy towards the war credits
of 1870 and during the Morocco conflict, as also by the attitude
taken up by the class-conscious proletariat towards intervention
in Russia.

FUNDAMENTAL FEATURES OF "MILITARISM FOR HOME" AND ITS PURPOSE

Militarism does not only serve for defence
and attack against the foreign enemy; it has a second task,[25] one which is being brought out
ever more clearly with the growing accentuation of class antagonism,
defining ever more clearly the form and nature of militarism,
viz., that of protecting the existing state of society, that of
being a pillar of capitalism and all reactionary forces in the
war of liberation engaged in by the working-class. Here it shows
itself purely as a weapon in the class struggle, a weapon in the
hands of the ruling classes, serving, in conjunction with the
police and law-courts, school and church, the purpose of obstructing
the development of class-consciousness and of securing, besides,
at all costs to a minority the dominating position in the state
and the liberty of exploiting their fellow-men, even against the
enlightened will of the majority of the people.

This is modern militarism, which attempts nothing
less than squaring the circle, which arms the people against the
people itself, which, by trying with all means to force upon social
division an artificial division according to ages, makes bold
to turn the workman into an oppressor and an enemy, into a murderer
of members of his own class and his friends, of his parents, sisters
and brothers and children, into a murderer of his own past and
future; which pretends to be democratic and despotic, enlightened
and mechanical, popular and anti-popular at the same time.

It must, however, not be forgotten that militarism
can also turn the point of its sword against the interior national,
and even the interior[26] religious
"enemy" (in Germany, for instance, against the Poles,[27] Alsatians and Danes), and
can moreover be employed in conflicts among the non-proletarian
classes, that militarism is a highly polymorphous phenomenon,
capable of many changes, and that the Prusso-German militarism
has attained a peculiarly flourishing state in consequence of
the peculiar semi-absolutist, feudal bureaucratic conditions of
Germany. This Prusso-German militarism is endowed with all the
bad and dangerous qualities of any form of capitalist militarism,
so that it is best suited to serve as a paradigm for showing militarism
in its present stage, in its forms, means and effects. As nobody
has as yet succeeded, to use a Bismarckian phrase, in imitating
our Prussian lieutenants, nobody has as yet been fully able to
imitate our Prusso-German militarism, which has not only become
a state within the state, but positively a state above the state.

Let us first consider the army systems of some
other countries. In doing so we must take into consideration not
only the army proper, but also the constabulary and police forces,
which frequently appear to be merely special military organizations
for everyday use against the interior enemy, but betray their
military origin by their very violence and brutality.

ARMY SYSTEMS OF SOME FOREIGN COUNTRIES

We encounter peculiar forms in the army systems
of countries such as England and America, Switzerland and Belgium.

Great Britain[28] has a mercenary army ("regulararmy"), a militia with a mounted yeomanry; besides, the so-called
Volunteers, a force voluntarily recruited which, on the whole,
is unpaid and numbered 245,000 men in 1905. The standing army,
including the militia (in which the furnishing of substitutes
is permitted) numbered 444,000 men in 1905, of whom however only
some 162,000 were stationed in England. For Ireland there exists,
moreover, a militarily organized police force of some 12,000 men.
The standing army is largely employed abroad, especially in India,
where two-thirds of the army of almost 230,000[29] men consists of natives. The colonies have, as a rule, their own
militias and volunteer forces. The relation between Great Britain's
home and colonial militarism is characterized by the military
budget, which, in 1897, was about 360 million marks for the home
country and about 510 million marks for India. To this must be
added the immense fleet, with crews and marines numbering almost
200,000 men.

The army system of the United States is a mixture
of standing army and militia. The army, which is made up by recruiting[30] and is by law limited to
a maximum strength of 100,000 men, numbers in times of peace,
according to the enlisted strength of 1905, 61,000 men (on October
15, 1906, including the Philippine Scouts, 67,253 men), among
them 3,800 officers, mostly educated at the military academy at
West Point. In the same year the militia numbered some 111,000
men. The militia is organized on a fairly democratic basis. In
times of peace it is under the control of the governors of the
various states, and its armament and training is not in accordance
with modern efficiency. Besides, an important part is played by
the police force, frequently organized on a military basis.

Of quite an original kind is another institution
which, considered in its formal aspect, does not fall within the
frame of this chapter, but which, however, must not be left unmentioned
in this connection on account of the function it performs. In
all the capitalist countries we find the gun-men of the employers,
even if, in some cases, they be only strike-breakers armed by
the employers. (This is no rare occurrence in Switzerland and
France, for instance, and as to Germany we refer the reader to
the Hamburg ship-builders' strike and the incidents at Nuremberg
in 1906). But the American capitalists have at all times at their
disposal such a band of gun-men of prime quality in the shape
of the armed Pinkerton detectives. Finally, taking into consideration
some 30,000 men in the American navy, in 1905, we see that the
United States, too, furnishes a choice collection of the main
forms of the armed forces of the state.

In Switzerland there existed until lately
a real people's army, a general arming of the people. Every Swiss
citizen, able to bear arms, had his gun and ammunition continually
in his house. That was the army of democracy of which Gaston Moch
treats in his well-known book. Switzerland enjoying an international
guarantee equal to that of Belgium, it was only natural that in
this country "militarism for abroad" should assume and
retain a particularly mild character, a result to which numerous
other circumstances contributed their share. But the "militarism
for home" changed with the accentuation of class antagonism.
The fact that the proletariat possessed arms and ammunition was
increasingly felt, by the capitalist class that wanted to dominate,
to be an impediment to its liberty to exploit and oppress and
even a danger to its existence. So, in September, 1899, they began
to disarm the people by taking its cartridges away and endeavoring
at the same time to develop with continually increasing vigor
the existing rudiments of militarism in the direction of the institutions
of the great military powers. Attempts were made to transform
successively the active portions of the army into a willing instrument
of class domination by all the means employed by those military
powers. In that way the celebrated Swiss militia developed more
and more the repellent traits which have made all standing armies
a disgrace to civilization. Nothing has been changed by the resolution
on the employment of soldiers in strikes which was passed by the
National Council, on December 21, 1906, in connection with the
law on military organization.[31]

Because of her neutrality, Belgium's
demand for soldiers for her standing army is considerably smaller
(by about one-half) than her "stock" of material for
soldiering. On that account the system of universal military service
is modified by a draft system (drawing lots) and by the
substitute system, which latter deeply influences the character
of the army. Naturally, only the well-to-do are able to furnish
substitutes, and they as naturally make the widest use of it.
At first that system of furnishing substitutes, which was formerly
so general, may not have been of any special political significance,
but in Belgium it has led to a result very serious for the ruling
class, as the country possesses a numerous proletariat and the
percentage of workmen is very great among the men liable to military
service and drawn by lot. Even that portion of the proletarian
Belgian army which did not consist of class-conscious proletarians
and proletarians ready to risk all, so rapidly succumbed to the
anti-militarist propaganda that for years past it has not had
any value as a weapon in the hands of the ruling class against
the interior enemy and is no longer used as such. But they found
a way out of the difficulty. From former times there existed an
institution, called the civic guard. To the civic guard belong
those who have drawn a lucky number and have furnished substitutes,
but only if they can buy their own uniforms and arms, a condition
almost excluding the poorer population. It used to be nothing
but a fancy-dress parade, its members were mostly Liberals, its
organization, democratic. Members of the civic guard kept their
arms at home, elected their own officers, etc. A change was brought
about in consequence of the increasing untrustworthiness of the
standing army. The administration and management of the civic
guard were taken out of the hands of the municipalities and transferred
to those of the government, the democratic institutions were abolished,
and the arms were taken away from the individuals and locked away
in the depots of the military administration. A fairly rigorous
system of military drill was introduced, and the training of the
civic guard was confided to the most objectionable characters
among the former officers of the standing army. Men between the
ages of 20 and 30 have to train no less than three nights a week
and on half of a Sunday every two weeks, and if formerly those
military exercises reminded one of the happy-go lucky functions
of our German civic soldiers of olden days, they are now carried
out under a sharp control and punctuality is enforced by punishments.
It is to be noted that this reorganization of the civic guard
has only taken place in communities of more than 20,000 inhabitants,
whilst in the other places the civic guard has remained a ridiculous
presence. That fact, too, marks the civic guard to be a special
force of the government in the struggle against the "interior
enemy." Excluding the military police, the standing army
numbered, in 1905, about 46,000 men; the active civic guard numbered
about 44,000 men, almost as many.

Belgium thus possesses an army against the
exterior, and a special army against the interior enemy, an exquisite
arrangement which, as the employment of the civic guard during
the late suffrage struggles and strikes has proved, renders and
will continue to render good service to the capitalist regime
in Belgium.

In addition, there is in Belgium the constabulary
or military police, who have simply to perform military tasks
in war as well as during strikes and riots. They are very numerous
and spread all over the country, of great mobility, and can be
concentrated, shifted and mobilized at a moment's notice, at Tervueren,
near Brussels, they have general barracks for their flying brigade,
and they swarm out during strikes and such like movements all
over the country like a flight of wasps. Most of them are former
non-commissioned officers of the army, they are well paid, excellently
armed, in short, an elite force. Whilst the civic guard is as
if created for its task in the class-struggle, because it represents
nothing less than a special military mobilization of the capitalist
bourgeoisie, which is well aware of its interests, the "watch-dogs"
of capitalism, organized in the constabulary, play their part
no less efficiently for the present, according to the rule that
they must play the tune called for by him who pays the piper.

Japan, a country
in about the same capitalist feudal stage of development as Germany,
has in spite of her insular position, which is similar to that
of England, and in consequence of her strained foreign relations,
of late become even from a military point of view a veritable
counterpart of Germany, except perhaps that her troops are given
a more serviceable war training.

CONCLUSIONS. RUSSIA

It follows from all this that the size and
the particular character of the organization of an army accommodate
themselves to the international situation, to the function the
army has as regards the exterior enemy. The international tension
is driving states (even those which are not yet capitalist and
which compete with and have to protect themselves against the
capitalist states) to train all citizens capable of bearing arms
and to adopt the most rigorous form of military organization,
the standing conscript army. This can be considerably relaxed
by natural causes as, for instance, by the insular position of
Great Britain or the comparatively insular situation of the United
States, and by artificial political means as, for instance, the
neutralization of Switzerland and the states of the Low Countries.
But the function of "militarism for home," against the
interior enemy, militarism as a weapon in the class-struggle,
is an ever necessary accompanying feature of capitalist development,
and even Gaston Moch regards the "re-establishment of order"
as a "legitimate function of a people's army." The reason
why "militarism for home" exhibits forms greatly differing
from one another explains itself simply by the fact that such
militarism has hitherto had a more national purpose, the fulfilment
of which was not so much influenced by international competition,
that therefore it can give much more consideration to national
peculiarities. However, England and also America (a country in
which the standing army was increased from 27,000 to about 61,000
men from 1896 to 1906, where the number of men in the war navy
was doubled, the war budget multiplied by two and a half and the
navy budget by three in the same space of time, and where Mr.
Taft asked for 100 millions more for 1907), are being increasingly
pushed into the paths of the militarism of the European continent.
This is certainly caused in the first line by changes in the international
situation and the requirements of jingo and imperialist world
policy, but in the second line quite unmistakably by changes in
the interior tension, the intensification of the class struggle.
It is scarcely possible that the militaristic velleities of the
British war secretary, Haldane, in September, 1906, have only
a temporal relation to the energetic political activity
of the British working-class. The propensity to introduce universal
military training of the Swiss kind, which for the time being
has been repulsed in England in spite of the strong agitation
in favor of such training and which in the United States found
significant expression in Mr. Roosevelt's message of December
4, 1906, is not a symptom of progress. It signifies, in spite
of all said to the contrary, a strengthening of militarism as
compared to its present condition, and is a station on the precipitous
road leading to a standing army, as the example of Switzerland
proves.

On account of the great multiplicity of possible
combinations between the factors determining the extent and nature
of the special requirements for protection against the exterior
and interior enemy, militarism shows unmistakably a pronounced
multiformity and transmutability. But that transmutability is
always kept within the limits prescribed by the absolutely essential
capitalistic purpose of militarism. Nevertheless, development
may temporarily take directly opposite roads. While France, for
example, under Picquart, is earnestly attacking the problem of
greatly reducing the training period of her reserve and territorial
troops, reforming the "biribiri" and abolishing separate
military jurisdiction, the president of the German central military
court, von Massow, quitted the service in the fall of 1906, because
the military command (the Prussian war ministry) had on the strength
of legal interpretation formally invaded the independence of the
military courts, an independence which had indeed already received
a curious construction by the disciplining of the judges acting
in the Bilse case. French conditions are almost exclusively due
to the prevailing anti-clericalism; clericalism has an important
pillar in the army, the government needs the help of the proletariat
for its anti-clerical policy. Such a combination is of course
not of eternal duration, nor has it sprung from a real, lasting
tendency of evolution. It results from a constellation, transient
in its nature, and is quite compatible, as has been proved, with
an energetic fight against anti militarism.

From these points of view an interesting case
is furnished by Russia which has been forced to adopt universal
military service on account of her intensely strained foreign
relations, and which as an Asiatic despotic state is confronted
by an interior discord without example. The interior enemy of
Czarism is not only the proletariat, but also the immense mass
of the peasantry and the bourgeoisie, and even a large portion
of the nobility. Ninety-nine percent. of the Russian soldiers
belong to classes that are the arch-enemies of the Czar's despotism.
The development of class consciousness is extremely hampered by
the low state of education, national and religious antagonisms
and the clashes of economic and social interests; further by the
greater or smaller pressure exercised by the widely ram)fied bureaucratic
apparatus, by the unfavorable arrangement of political districts,
the insufficiently developed means of communication, and other
things. By a cunningly devised system of elite forces, like the
constabulary and, above all, the Cossacks, who have been positively
changed into a special social class by means of good pay and other
material rewards, large political privileges and the establishment
of semi-socialist Cossack communities, and are thus artificially
bound to the despotic regime, Czarism attempts to secure a sufficiently
strong band of faithful retainers to fight down the unrest which
has penetrated deeply into the ranks of the army. In addition
to these "watch-dogs of Czarism" there are the Circassians[32] and other barbarian populations
living in the empire of the knout who, for instance, were let
loose upon the land like a pack of wolves during the counterrevolution
in the Baltic Province, and all the other armed beneficiaries
of Czarism whose name is legion, the police and their accomplices,
as well as the Russian toughs, the black bands. In the bourgeois
capitalist state the conscript army, in its function as a weapon
against the proletariat, is a crude and, at the same time, terrible
and fantastic contradiction in itself, under the Czar's despotic
regime the conscript army is a weapon which must 1:urn itself
more and more with crushing power against the despotism of Czarism
itself, from which at the same time the conclusion must be drawn
that the experience derived from the antimilitarist developments
in Russian can be utilized only with great care in regard to
the bourgeois capitalist states. In the bourgeois capitalist
states, the attempts of the ruling classes to buy the people to
fight against itself, and that even largely with money taken from
the people for the purpose mentioned, are condemned to ultimate
failure. In regard to Russia, we are witnessing already how desperate
and wretched attempts of Czarism to bribe the revolution, as it
were, are resulting in an early and pitiable fiasco amidst the
miseries of the financial situation, in spite of all the endeavors
of the unscrupulous international stock-exchange financiers to
retrieve the situation. It is certain that the loan question is
an important one, at least in regard to the rate at which the
revolution develops, but as little as revolutions can be artificially
made as little and still less can they be bought,[33] even if the means of the high finance of the world should be employed.

↑Bernstein [the prominent German Socialist leader] wrongly stated in Vie socialiste of June 5, 1905, that modern military institutions were only the heritage of the more or less feudal monarchy.

↑One need only consider Russia where, however, entirely peculiar circumstances which did not arise from interior conditions helped to bring about the result. Standing armies resting on a basis different from that of universal military service are, for instance, the mercenary armies. In the Italian cities of the XVth century militias were also known (Burckhardt, p. 327).

↑In his well-known letter to Bluntschli (December, 1880) we read: "Eternal peace is a dream, and not even a beautiful one, and war is a part of God's world order. In it are developed the noblest virtues of man, courage and abnegation, dutifulness and self-sacrifice at the risk of life. Without war the world would sink into materialism." A few months earlier Moltke had written: "Every war is a national misfortune" (Collected Works V, p. 193 and p. 200), and in 1841 he even wrote in an article that appeared in the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung: "We confess openly to be in favor of the much derided idea of a general European peace."

↑The value of the entire foreign trade of the world rose, according to Hubler's tables, from 75,224 million marks in 1891 to 109,000 million marks in 1905.

↑Moltke's views in this respect were highly fantastic. According to him the times when wars were resolved upon by cabinets were indeed past, but he considers the political party leaders to be wicked and dangerous provokers of war. The party leaders and -- the stock exchange! It is true that here and there he has a deeper view of things (Collected Works, 3, pp. I, 126, 135, 138).

↑ Characterized by that fantastic abortion, entitled, "The Invasion of 1910."

↑On account of the quarrel about Morocco France spent, in 1906, far more than a hundred million for the military protection of her eastern frontiers.

↑About the alleged, not yet fully explained plan of Semler, the Reichstag representative of the Hamburg shipowners, to capture Fernando Po in the Jameson manner, see the budgetary debates of the Reichstag of December, 1906.

↑That is not disproved because he declared for the time being against universal military service, which is regretted by the Kreuzzeitung [the junker organ], of November 29, 1906, because, according to the paper, universal service would educate the English people into a better understanding of the seriousness of war. In Germany, of course, universal military service has only the importance to force the people to make sacrifices in blood and money, in conformity with the will of the noble knights of the Kreuzeeitung, whilst the decision about peace and war rests with those for whom the seriousness of war exists least. They can even appreciate democracy for abroad! Concerning the strong tendency in England and America towards a universal militia, see p. 51.

↑Twenty-four and three-fourths millions for the navy, 51 millions for the army, 7 millions for interest -- a total increase of some 83 million marks as compared with the budget of 1906-7. Fine prospects of further extravagant naval armaments were held out by an evidently inspired article that appeared in the Reichbote, on December 21, 1906. To all that must be added the enormous expenses for colonial wars (454 millions for the China Expedition, 490 millions already for the rebellion in Southwest Africa, 2 millions for the rebellion in East Africa, etc.); the question of footing those bills led, in December, 1906, to a conflict and the dissolution of the Reichstag.

↑See Berliner Tageblatt of October 27, 1906. Note above all the notorious resolution handed in by Ablass, December 13, 1906, and the Liberal platform for the Reichstag elections of January 25, 1907.

↑La Revue, October 1, 1900. The "actual results achieved" by the movement for disarmament, are a well preserved secret of the editorial board of the Revue.

↑Germany's colonial expenditure is in a greatly preponderating measure of a military nature, even according to Dernburg's memorial of October, 1906, in spite of all his cooking of accounts.

↑ Since December 31, 1900, France possesses a real colonial army which has brought her the saddest disappointments. See the Hamburg Correspondent, December 7, 1906 (No. 621), also note 18 on next page and p. 72. In Germany they are busily engaged in creating a colonial army. We are approaching it at the double quick.

↑This hypocritical and, at the same time, shamefaced excuse is now being dropped with frank cynicism; see the article, signed by G B., in the monthly magazine, Die deutschen Kolonien (October, 1906), and the remark made by Strantz at the pan-German convention (September, 1906), where he said: "In the colonies we don't want to convert people into Christians; they are to work for us. This humanitarian softheadedness is downright ridiculous. German sentimentality has deprived us of a man like Peters." Again, Heinrich Hartert wrote in the Tag, December 21,1906, that it is "the duty of the missions . . . to adapt themselves to given circumstances"; but they had succeeded "in frequently becoming a nuisance to the commercial man." It is at this point that the principal friction arises between the German Clerical Party and the Government in regard to colonial policy, this alone explains the furious fight entered upon in December 1906, by the merchant Dernburg against the so-called collateral government of the Clerical Party. --For America the Kreuzzetung ( September 29, 1906) preaches: "The simple extermination of whole tribes of Indians is so inhuman and unchristian that it cannot be defended under any circumstances, especially as it is in no way a question of existence for the Americans." But where it is such a question whole tribes may be "exterminated" even by the believer in Christian charity -- according to the views of the colonial Christian.

↑See the memorable debates of the German Reichstag between November c8 and December 4, 1906, where the " abscess was lanced."

↑Since the above was written great changes have taken place in the army system of Great Britain. During the world war the mercenary army has disappeared and a conscript army has taken its place. Moreover, in the years immediately preceding the war Great Britain's volunteer forces underwent great changes in composition and name. The militia, too, ceased to exist, either in name or in fact, after 1908. [TRANSLATOR. ]

↑Even Sheriff von Sievers-Roemershof writes of the "blood-thirsty Circassians" in the Dünazeitung of December 4, (17,) 1906.

↑Not even, as now proposed, in the modern way of jobbing away and discounting concessions and natural resources to American trusts, that last invention and cry of despair of the financial policy of Czarism.